Can you get that action with a regular cue vs a jump cue?
I think so. I'll be shooting all kinds of jump shots with jump cues, LD cues, regular maple cues, and break cues for this next video. Hopefully those shots will help answer this question more concretely.
And I don't know if those are what you an call a follow shot where there is acceleration of the cueball after contact, it's mostly stun shots the forward momentum of the ball sends it forward from what I can see is happening.
I interpreted the OP's question this way: Can you jump a cue ball in such a way that the cue ball has forward spin while it is still in the air after the initial jump? In that case, the answer is definitely yes.
If we're talking about overall cue ball behavior after OB contact, then the answer is a lot more complicated. If the cue ball lands on the cloth before OB contact, it will tend to pick up forward spin. In a couple of the shots in the video linked above, you can see the cue ball in the air with no spin and even with backspin, but after it lands on the cloth, it ends up with forward spin.
In any case, unless you get the distance perfect (i.e. cueball contacts the table and OB at the same time), in most cases, the cue ball will end up going forward of the perceived tangent line. There are a couple of reasons for this:
1. If the cue ball is above the table surface when it contacts the OB, the plane of the tangent line is not parallel to the surface of the table, so the tangent line isn't necessarily perpendicular to the perceived direction of travel of the OB.
2. If the cue ball bounces right before contacting the OB, then the impact with the cloth/slate, and the impact with the OB will BOTH tend to add forward spin to the cue ball.
There are, however, some cases in which the cue ball will pick up reverse spin from the OB collision.
If the cue ball is on the downward approach from its flight when it contacts the OB, then the interaction may add follow or draw to the cue ball. The resultant adjustment to spin depends on actual (3D) direction of the cue ball at the moment of impact in relation to the point of impact on the cue ball (to OB).
By the way, to clarify what I mean by the "tendency" to pick up forward or reverse spin: If the cue ball has reverse spin while in the air, then it lands on the cloth, it will either have less reverse spin, or possibly even switch from reverse spin to forward spin. If you really pay attention to the spin on the airborne cueball in the videos, I think you'll see what I mean. In some shots, the cueball has no spin while airborne, but has forward spin by the time it reaches the object ball.
I'm struggling to explain this in words, but I'm sure PJ or Dr Dave can give us a more precise explanation.
In any case, I would say that most jump shots will end with the cue ball ultimately traveling well ahead of the tangent line. The reason for this is that to get the cue ball to actually draw from a jump shot, the precision of the distance of the jump becomes much more important, since there are more ways for the cue ball to pick up forward spin (or reduce reverse spin) than there are ways for the cue ball to conserve or increase reverse spin. I hope that makes sense...
Very nice work on the video, should have looked at the before.
Thanks! These kinds of discussions are very helpful to me in determining exactly what to demonstrate in the videos, so don't hesitate to be direct with me and ask as many questions as you can.
-Blake
